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Gucci Mane – Long Live Dolph [Music Video]

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Gucci Mane closes out his Christmas album with the rawest verse he’s written all year.

On December 17, 2021, Gucci Mane dropped “Long Live Dolph,” the tribute song and music video that closes out his 17-track compilation album “So Icy Christmas.” The release honors Memphis rapper Young Dolph, born Adolph Robert Thornton Jr., who was shot and killed at age 36 on November 17, 2021, outside Makeda’s Homemade Butter Cookies in Memphis. The video pairs the reflective track with footage nodding to the two rappers’ history, including their 2013 joint mixtape “East Memphis Classics.”

• “Long Live Dolph” is the 17th and final track on Gucci Mane’s “So Icy Christmas” compilation, released December 17, 2021, exactly one month after Young Dolph’s death.
• The song directly addresses the shooting, with Gucci Mane rapping about industry violence and betrayal rather than offering a generic memorial.
• The release follows a December 11 memorial held at Rolling Loud California, where Young Dolph’s protégé Key Glock and artists from his Paper Route Empire imprint paid tribute.

A Verse Built on Grief, Not Platitudes

Gucci Mane opens the track with a line that sets the tone for everything that follows: “Had to blaze one up for Dolph, don’t think they felt ya like I feel him / Same n****s wanna be ya be the ones that come to kill ya.” It’s a pointed, uncomfortable observation about proximity and betrayal rather than the kind of vague “rest in peace” bar that usually fills out a tribute record. Gucci Mane and Young Dolph had a real working history together, and that familiarity shows in how specific the writing gets.

Later in the song, he widens the lens beyond Dolph specifically, rapping: “Never get your flowers while you’re here, and damn, that says a lot / All this senseless violence that I’m seein’, I swear it needs to stop / Humans killing other human beings almost ’round the clock.” It’s the closest thing the track has to a thesis statement, and it lands harder because it comes from an artist who has spent three decades inside the same Southern rap scene Dolph came up in.

“Never get your flowers while you’re here, and damn, that says a lot.”

The Video’s Visual Callbacks

The accompanying music video leans on imagery tied to Gucci Mane and Young Dolph’s shared catalog rather than staging anything abstract. Visual nods reference their 2013 collaborative tape “East Memphis Classics,” a project that established the two as recurring collaborators well before Dolph built Paper Route Empire into one of the more self-sufficient independent labels in rap. That history is part of why the tribute carries weight beyond the usual industry statement — Gucci Mane isn’t eulogizing a peer he barely knew, he’s closing a chapter with someone he actually made records with.

Part of a Wider Wave of Mourning

“Long Live Dolph” didn’t arrive in isolation. It followed a December 11 memorial set at Rolling Loud California that featured Key Glock, Dolph’s protégé and closest musical partner, alongside other Paper Route Empire artists. Between that Rolling Loud tribute and Gucci Mane’s closing track on “So Icy Christmas,” the response from within hip-hop to Dolph’s killing stretched across live stages and studio releases within roughly five weeks of his death — a fast, visible reaction from a scene still processing the loss of one of its most independent and outspoken voices. Fans looking for more of Gucci Mane’s recent output can find it alongside other new hip-hop videos, including his own “Rumors” collaboration with Lil Durk and Yo Gotti’s “Cold Gangsta” video with 42 Dugg and EST Gee, both part of the same wave of Southern rap releases closing out 2021.

Gucci Mane didn’t need a feature or a hook to make “Long Live Dolph” land — just four bars about who was standing closest when the trigger got pulled. That’s the song that closes out “So Icy Christmas,” and it’s the one Memphis will be sitting with a lot longer than the holiday album it’s attached to.